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Every October a dedicated group of gamers get together to raise money in a marathon of gaming to support Children’s hospitals across the nation. This event is called Extra Life. This year the people at Extra Life along with all the gamers who donated and coaxed their friends into donating have raised over one million dollars for children’s hospitals all over the nation.

I was with the group at Lusipurr.com and we raised 407 dollars by the time it started.and a lot of us spent all day playing video games until 9 in the morning (PDT) and we had a blast. One of the members of the group played through three games in one day and not just easy ones. My friend played through Fable, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Crash Team Racing all in 24 hours. I played Halo: Reach, The Binding of Issac, Bejeweled, some Final Fantasy V, and other games. The Lusipurr.com Team Fortress 2 servers went up and we all played that for a while. It was a great time and next year we are hoping to raise even more money.

If you are reading this and think that this is a great idea there is still time! You can go to Lusipurr.com and donate to our group (we have a goal of 500 and are currently at 437 because someone donated 20 dollars after the gaming had ended). Donations are still getting taken until the end of October and all the money goes towards a Children’s Hospital that was chosen by the head of Lusipurr.com, none of the money goes towards the site.

The Casual game market has grown in the past years and one of the mainstays is Bejeweled. Coming out early this year was Bejeweled 3 which has been out for some time now. Is this game worth the price tag? Or should you take your money elsewhere while you play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook?

To be honest, this is just a rehash of all the other Bejeweled titles that have came out over the years. I have played this game for a little bit and while it is fun, and addicting, there are other games that make it on the list just as easy and are far more innovative. Spend your money on The Binding of Issac and go play Bejeweled on Facebook.

The Heroes of Might and Magic (or Might and Magic Heroes) games have had a long hard life since what is considered the masterpiece of the series at III. Might and Magic Heroes VI is trying to recapture the franchise after years of disappointment.

Having only played through the game for a couple hours I can say that it is indeed a Might and Magic Heroes game. It has the same combat as all of the other games, which makes it very limited for some people. The tactical combat that it implements is very nostalgic for fans of the series, but it would probably not capture the attention of people who have not played this game before. The same thing goes for the movement. You are given a hero who can move a certain amount of spaces and then has to end their turn. If you are a fan of the series I am sure you will love this game, if you don’t enjoy it then you should probably try it out at a friend’s house, see if you like it, and purchase it on Steam if you are interested.

The Binding of Issac is a story from the Bible that has Abraham going and listening to God and is willing to kill his own son in order to prove to God that he is a willing servant. In the story God stops Abraham from killing his son thus sparing Issac’s life. The Binding of Issac video game is very loosely based on this concept. In the game your mother is an insane Christian who belives that the voices in her head are from God and not just a part of her insanity. Issac then tries to run away from his mother by going into the basement of their house, finding creatures that must be killed in order to progress deeper and eventually meeting up with the final boss, your mother.

The Binding of Issac is a very simple game, basically a top down dungeon crawler with the Zelda perspective with slight puzzle elements, but mainly just run and gun shooting in order to take care of the enemies. The controls for the game use WASD to run around and the arrow keys in order to shoot your ammo, which are tears. You can find temporary items in the game which can be used by the Q button and some of them are pills that can upgrade certain features for Issac, or even decrease them. Another Temporary item are the cards which as well do other things, but basically are just random uses, not for stat building. The Space bar is used for items that are used like temporary items, but charge up so that they can be used multiple times. The main problem I have with the controls is that there is no real option to use a gamepad for it, it just says “Use Joy2Key” and that is a disappointment because Joy2Key does not work on my computer. For these type of games I definitely prefer to use a gamepad so I opted to check out Xpadder which works wonderfully.

As I said, the game play is very simple in The Binding of Issac, but that does not mean it wouldn’t provide a challenge, the enemies are pretty ruthless and their firing patterns are annoying. Figuring out how to take out some of the bosses is rather simple though, such as “shoot this one more” or “use bombs on this one” and that is kind of a shame. In fact, some of the regular monsters provided more of a challenge than a lot of the bosses in the game. As you travel down the basement the monsters and bosses get harder, but if the player is diligent and lucky he/she could get a power up for every level they have completed, sometimes more than one upgrade per level.

The Binding of Issac is a great purchase on Steam for only 5 dollars, even if you don’t have Xpadder and want to play with the keyboard the controls are pretty easy to get used to. I would strongly recommend this game to anyone who has a few dollars and wants to waste hours of time. If you are reading this, go buy this game now.

What makes a game addicting? Well there are obviously certain areas for which every game can be addicting, whether it be storyline, game play, or just that desire to beat the game. When I get addicted to a game it typically is either the storyline or game play that gets me addicted, so let’s look at those.

When I play a game for storyline I always look at the Final Fantasy series. The Final Fantasy Series have always had detailed storylines that draw the player in, even from the first game. Final Fantasy VII is the best example of this type of story, when playing through the game the player is trying to figure out what is going on. The player wants to know why Cloud is so crazy, what Sephiroth is going to do in the end, what that bit of the flower girl dying will do to the player’s emotions. It is a great game that makes the player want to figure out how the story will unfold.

Game Play is where people generally get caught and it’s usually simple games. Bejeweled is a great example of this. I know several gamers who have went and spent hours playing this game just because of how addicting the simple game play is. I know for me the simple game play of The Binding of Issac has drawn me in and made it so I couldn’t stop playing for hours.